Which one among the following statements is not correct?
Johannes Kepler proved that the path of each planet around the Sun is elliptical with the Sun at its focus.
The first successful attempt to establish the size of the Earth is credited to Eratosthenes.
The first Greek to profess a Sun-centred or Heliocentric Universe was Sir Isaac Newton.
The famous astronomical book Almagest was compiled by Ptolemy.
Answer is Right!
Answer is Wrong!
This question was previously asked in
UPSC CISF-AC-EXE – 2018
Statement B is correct. Eratosthenes of Cyrene, a Greek scholar in the 3rd century BC, is famous for making the first relatively accurate calculation of the Earth’s circumference using geometry and astronomical observations.
Statement C is incorrect. The first known Greek astronomer to propose a heliocentric model of the solar system was Aristarchus of Samos in the 3rd century BC, predating Kepler and Newton by over a thousand years. Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) was a British physicist and mathematician, not Greek, and his work explained *why* planetary orbits are elliptical (gravity), building upon Kepler’s descriptive laws.
Statement D is correct. The Almagest is the 2nd-century AD astronomical treatise by Claudius Ptolemy, which presented a detailed geocentric model of the universe that remained the standard view for centuries.